A Tale of Two Cities/ Book the Second/ Chapter XVI

CHAPTER XVI: STILL KNITTING

MADAME DEFARGE and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the
bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the
darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue
by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where
the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the
whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for
listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village
scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of
dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone
courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved
fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just
lived in the village- had a faint and bare existence there, as its
people had- that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from
faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that
dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they
changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they
would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great
window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints
were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised,
and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two
or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep
at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have
pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the
moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living
there.

Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on
the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well- thousands
of acres of land- a whole province of France- all France itself- lay
under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So
does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie
in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of
light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer
intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours,
every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible
creature on it.

The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the
starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto
their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the
barrier guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the
usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted; knowing
one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he
was intimate with, and affectionately embraced.

When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky
wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint's
boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and
offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:

"Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?"

"Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy
commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that
he can say, but he knows of one."

"Eh well!" said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool
business air. "It is necessary to register him. How do they call
that man?"

"He is English."

"So much the better. His name?"

"Barsad," said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he
had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with
perfect correctness.

"Barsad," repeated madame. "Good. Christian name?"

"John."

"John Barsad," repeated madame, after murmuring it once to
herself. "Good. His appearance; is it known?"

"Eh my faith. It is a portrait!" said madame, laughing. "He shall be
registered to-morrow."

They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was
midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her
desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her
absence examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made
other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible
way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the
contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began
knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots,
for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Defarge, with
his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring,
but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the
business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.

The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so
foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge's olfactory
sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much
stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy
and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down
his smoked-out pipe.

"You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted
the money. "There are only the usual odours."

"I am a little tired," her husband acknowledged.

"You are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose quick eyes had
never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two
for him. "Oh, the men, the men!"

"But my dear!" began Defarge.

"But my dear!" repeated madame, nodding firmly; "but my dear!

You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!"

"Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his
breast, "it is a long time."

"It is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it not a long
time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."

"It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning,"
said Defarge.

"How long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it take to make and
store the lightning? Tell me."

Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something
in that too.

"It does not take a long time," said madame, "for an earthquake to
swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the
earthquake?"

"A long time, I suppose," said Defarge.

"But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces
everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing,
though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it."

She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.

"I tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, for
emphasis, "that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the
road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I
tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives
of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world
that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the
Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour.
Can such things last? Bah! I mock you."

"My brave wife," returned Defarge, standing before her with his head
a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and
attentive pupil before his catechist, "I do not question all this. But
it has lasted a long time, and it is possible- you know well, my wife,
it is possible- that it may not come, during our lives."

"Eh well! How then?" demanded madame, tying another knot, as if
there were another enemy strangled.

"Well!" said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic
shrug. "We shall not see the triumph."

"We shall have helped it," returned madame, with her extended hand
in strong action. "Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe,
with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even
if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant,
and still I would--"

Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.

"Hold!" cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with
cowardice; "I too, my dear, will stop at nothing."

"Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your
victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself
without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil;
but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained- not shown-
yet always ready."

Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking
her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its
brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in
a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.

Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the
wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if
she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of
her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not
drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot,
and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and
adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near
madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on
the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest
manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far
removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how
heedless flies are!- perhaps they thought as much at Court that
sunny summer day.

A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which
she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin
her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.

It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the
customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the
wineshop.

"Good day, madame," said the new-comer.

"Good day, monsieur."

She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her
knitting: "Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet
nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark,
eyes dark, thin, long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight,
having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a
sinister expression! Good day, one and all!"

"Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a
mouthful of cool fresh water, madame."

Madame complied with a polite air.

"Marvellous cognac this, madame!"

It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame
Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said,
however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting.
The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the
opportunity of observing the place in general.

"You knit with great skill, madame."

"I am accustomed to it."

"A pretty pattern too!"

"You think so?" said madame, looking at him with a smile.

"Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?"

"Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a smile while
her fingers moved nimbly.

"Not for use?"

"That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do-- Well,"
said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind
of coquetry, "I'll use it!"

It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be
decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two
men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when,
catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of
looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went
away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered,
was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his
eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged
away in a poverty stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite
natural and unimpeachable.

"JOHN," thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers
knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. "Stay long enough, and I
shall knit 'BARSAD' before you go."

"You have a husband, madame?"

"I have."

"Children?"

"No children."

"Business seems bad?"

"Business is very bad; the people are so poor."

"Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too- as you
say."

"As you say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting
an extra something into his name that boded him no good.

"Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally
think so. Of course."

"I think?" returned madame, in a high voice. "I and my husband
have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All
we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject we think of, and
it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without
embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think for others? No, no."

The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make,
did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister
face; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow
on Madame Defarge's little counter, and occasionally sipping his
cognac.

"A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah! the poor
Gaspard!" With a sigh of great compassion.

"My faith!" returned madame, coolly and lightly, "if people use
knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew
beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the price."

"I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that
invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary
susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: "I believe there is
much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor
fellow? Between ourselves."

"Is there?" asked madame, vacantly.

"Is there not?"

"-Here is my husband!" said Madame Defarge.

As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy
saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile,
"Good day, Jacques!" Defarge stopped short, and stared at him.

"Good day, Jacques!" the spy repeated; with not quite so much
confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.

"You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of the
wineshop. "You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am
Ernest Defarge."

"It is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited too:
"good day!

"Good day!" answered Defarge, drily.

"I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting
when you entered, that they tell me there is- and no wonder!- much
sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor
Gaspard."

"No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. "I know
nothing of it."

Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood
with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that
barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom
either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.

The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious
attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of
fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge
poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little
song over it.

"You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I
do?" observed Defarge.

"Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly
interested in its miserable inhabitants."

"Hah!" muttered Defarge.

"The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to
me," pursued the spy, "that I have the honour of cherishing some
interesting associations with your name."

"Indeed!" said Defarge, with much indifference.

"Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old
domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you.
You see I am informed of the circumstances?"

"Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it
conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she
knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always
with brevity.

"It was to you," said the spy, "that his daughter came; and it was
from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown
monsieur; how is he called?- in a little wig- Lorry- of the bank of
Tellson and Company- over to England."

"Such is the fact," repeated Defarge.

"Very interesting remembrances!" said the spy. "I have known
Doctor Manette and his daughter, in England."

"Yes?" said Defarge.

"You don't hear much about them now?" said the spy.

"No," said Defarge.

"In effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her
little song, "we never hear about them. We received the news of
their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but,
since then, they have gradually taken their road in life- we, ours-
and we have held no correspondence."

"Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. "She is going to be
married."

"Going?" echoed madame. "She was pretty enough to have been
married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me."

He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made
the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his
cognac to the end, he added:

"Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman;
to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of
Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious
thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis,
for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in
other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England,
he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the
name of his mother's family."

Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable
effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little
counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe,
he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would
have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his
mind.

Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be
worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad
paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to
say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward
to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. For
some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint
Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them,
lest he should come back.

"Can it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at
his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair:
"what he has said of Ma'amselle Manette?"

"As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little,
"it is probably false. But it may be true."

"If it is-" Defarge began, and stopped.

"If it is?" repeated his wife.

"-And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph- I hope,
for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France."

"Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual
composure, "will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to
the end that is to end him. That is all I know."

"But it is very strange- now, at least, is it not very strange"-
said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it,
"that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself,
her husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this
moment, by the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us?"

"Stranger things than that will happen when it does come,"
answered madame. "I have them both here, of a certainty; and they
are both here for their merits; that is enough."

She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and
presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about
her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the
objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch
for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in,
very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual
aspect.

In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned
himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and
came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air,
Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from
place to place and from group to group: a Missionary- there were
many like her- such as the world will do well never to breed again.
All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the
mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking;
the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the
bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more
famine-pinched.

But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as
Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker
and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with,
and left behind.

Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration.
"A great woman," said he, "a strong woman, a grand woman, a
frightfully grand woman!"

Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells
and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard,
as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them.
Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then
ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be
melted into thundering cannon; when the military drums should be
beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the
voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in
about the women who sat knitting, knitting, they their very selves
were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit
knitting, knitting, dropping heads.